Marshall (2-1, 0-0) at Southern Miss (2-1, 0-0)

Thursday’s line: Southern Miss -7

First meeting: 2005 in Huntington

Last meeting: 2007 in Huntington (USM won 33-24)

Southern Miss leads the series 3-0

Last week: USM def. Arkansas St. 27-24; MU def. Memphis 17-16

With Marshall falling on hard times right around the time they joined Conference USA, and Southern Miss suffering something of a slide of its own in recent years, some of the anticipated luster has faded on this young conference rivalry between two of the more respected programs outside of the BCS automatic qualifier conference pool. The games themselves, however, have lived up the billing for the most part, as the first meeting resulted in USM hanging on for an overtime win, and last year’s contest featured a furious Marshall comeback that put a scare into the hearts of Golden Eagle fans everywhere. Only the 2006 meeting, a 42-7 thumping of the Herd in Hattiesburg featured a runaway. Will the 2008 edition be another tight one, or will one of these programs—both seemingly on the rise—make a statement? As the teams mirror each other in a lot of ways, it could go any number of directions.

Marshall’s offense, much like Southern Miss’, features a workhorse running back in Darius Marshall, and a go-to tight end in Cody Slate. Marshall (the player), made the CUSA All-Freshman team in 2007 after posting 631 yards and an average of 5.1 per carry. In 2008, he’s picked up right where he left off, currently ranking 23rd in the FBS and 2nd in CUSA (only to Southern Miss’ own Damion Fletcher) in rushing yards per game at a hair under 102. In Slate, Marshall (the school) has a counterpart to Southern Miss’ Shawn Nelson: a tall tight end with speed and good hands. Slate has missed the past two games to a knee injury but will play Saturday. The two players’ stats over the past few years are eerily similar, but it’s worth noting—as Marshall Coach Mark Snyder recently did—that Nelson is a considerably bigger factor in USM’s offense these days than has been in the past.

The pilot of Marshall offense is redshirt freshman quarterback Mark Cann, who delivered an otherwise pretty good effort (20 for 39, 211 yards) marred by 2 interceptions in his second game, a blowout at the hands of Wisconsin and a cleaner one (14 for 28, 224 yards, 1 TD, no INTs) in a close win vs. Memphis. Cann and the rest of the backfield operate behind a fairly experienced (3 returning starters out of 5) but not wholly aged (2 seniors and a sophomore among those 3) line that amazingly has yet to allow a sack in 2008.

The Herd’s defense is centered around junior outside linebacker Albert McClellan, who was named CUSA Defensive Player of the Year in 2006, and is back in ’08 after missing ’07 due to injury. McClellan has 2 sacks in the young season. Other players to watch include senior inside linebacker Maurice Kitchens, who leads the team in total tackles with 26 including 1 sack, and senior free safety C.J. Spillman, who leads the team in solo tackles with 11. As a unit, Marshall’s defense is pretty average (55th in the FBS) against the run, yielding 117 yards per game, but rather atrocious (112th) against the pass, allowing nearly 309 yards per game (and that’s not skewed by the Wisconsin blowout; they gave up a whopping 368 to Memphis). As with most units at this point in the season, it’s tough to read a pattern from the game-by-game sample since, as was alluded to previously, the schedule so far has included not only a 51-14 blowout at the hands of a Top 15 Wisconsin and a low-scoring 17-16 squeaker over Memphis, but also an obligatory alumni-assuring home pounding of a lower-division opponent.

On paper (or an electronic analog thereof), this should be a good one. You’ve got two teams with similar offenses still in the early stages of finding themselves, and on top of that, in many places on the roster, each team has a counterpart to the other’s key player. In the end, though, Southern Miss’ multiple offensive weapons will probably prove too much for Marshall’s heretofore generous defense. The only question is how much can the Golden Eagles’ young defense slow down Marshall (currently the winningest FBS team in West Virginia, by the way, much to the chagrin of my WVU-alum spouse) when they have the ball? There will probably be some scary moments in this one, but I doubt it’ll be quite the nail-biter we saw (or heard, no thanks to our supposed “play-by-play” announcer) last week at Arkansas State.

• We beat a solid and significantly more experienced team at their place.
• We did it in only the 3rd game of the season.
• There’s some deserved concern in regard to the defense after once again giving up a ton of yards. Unfortunately, it’s probably not wise to expect a whole lot better any time soon considering our youth on the line. This is a problem area everyone knew about going into the season, and you can’t just magically turn a freshman or sophomore into a grizzled, 30-lbs-heavier senior. Hopefully, the lack of tackling on initial contact can be improved upon, but mostly, it just goes with the territory.
• Far too many dropped passes tonight. I’m more forgiving to DeAndre Brown since he was in high school just a few months ago, but when the ball hits somebody’s hands, a play has to be made
• Is Fletch versatile, or what? 91 yards rushing and 61 passing, including a 24-yard TD.
• Also, another great game from Shawn Nelson (7 receptions for 110).
• All of the good football coaches I’ve ever been around had certain things in common, and Larry Fedora has displayed every one of them so far:
  • they stay positive
  • they don’t just direct players, they teach the game
  • they preach the fact that the outcome of every game comes down to just a handful of plays, and there’s no way of knowing which plays those will be, so you’d better bust your ass on every one just in case
  • While they obviously care about wins and losses, their larger concern–win or lose–is always their own team’s performance and improvement.
• With the first of our “toss-up” games in the books on the good side of the ledger, there is no way in Hades we’re going to lose 6 or more games this year as some have predicted.

Southern Miss (1-1, 0-0) at Arkansas State (2-0, 0-0)

Tuesday’s line: Arkansas St. –1

First meeting: 1962 in Jonesboro

Last meeting: 2007 in Hattiesburg (USM won 16-10)

Southern Miss leads the series 8-2

Last week: USM def. by Auburn 27-13 ; ASU def. Texas Southern 83-10

In what has suddenly become a more intriguing match-up than anyone expected, the Golden Eagles head to Jonesboro, Arkansas, Saturday to take on the upstart Arkansas State Red Wolves, who are fresh off a stunner at Texas A. & M. and a record-breaking performance vs. Texas Southern.

In the Red Wolves (who, as you probably know, were forced to change their mascot from the “Indians” at the behest of a group of people who make such culturally sensitive decisions on matters of syntax from their offices in INDIANapolis, INDIANa), Southern Miss faces a similar challenge as it did during the first two games of the season. ASU junior running back Reggie Arnold has been a force so far this season, as he has been his entire career. Arkansas State’s version of our own Damion Fletcher, Arnold has run for over 1,000 yards each of the last two seasons and is off to quite the start this year, piling up 145 yards at Texas A & M and 123–on 8 carries!–vs. Texas Southern. Their second-leading rusher, freshman Derek Lawson, was wisely given the bulk of the carries vs. TSU and put up 211 yards in that game. As a team, Arkansas State ranks 2nd in the FBS in rushing yardage. While Texas Southern’s defense certainly contributed to those gaudy stats, it’s important to remember that the Wolves also hung 280 on Texas A & M, which had a wholly average run defense (64th out of 119) in 2007. Clearly, USM’s defense is going to have to bring its “A” game to contain the Wolves on the ground come Saturday.

Through the air, Arkansas State isn’t as scary on paper, but that’s mostly because they just haven’t had a whole lot of reason to throw the ball. Junior QB Corey Leonard has posted an astronomical passer rating of 192.57 so far in 2008, completing 24 out of 38 for 389 yards and 5 TDs and zero INTs. That’s an outstanding performance, but since most QBs get 38 attempts in one game instead of two, Leonard, as well as the rest of ASU’s passing game, has gone largely unnoticed by outsiders. While it can’t be assumed that Leonard can post those types of numbers if he has to throw twice as often, it can also not be assumed that he can’t should USM put all its defensive eggs in the “force them to throw” basket.

Speaking of defense, Arkansas State’s is led by senior LB Ben Owens, who so far has accounted for 14 tackles and a sack. The line, led by senior end Brian Flagg, entered 2008 expected to be among the best in the Sun Belt and has not disappointed, posting 6 sacks already (4 vs. A & M). In the secondary, the Red Wolves entered 2008 without a returning starter, but with plenty of experience nonetheless, as none of the current starting 4 played in fewer than 11 games in ’07. All told, the pass defense has been pretty stout, currently 29th in the FBS (again, skewed by a game with Texas Southern, but they did hold TAMU to 170 yards). The rush defense hasn’t been lacking either, allowing 133 yards on the ground vs. TAMU and 95 vs. Texas Southern.

As I said in the opening, this is going to be a pretty interesting game. On one hand, one would hope Southern Miss would match up favorably player-for-player, but on the other, you’ve got a Golden Eagle team that’s still figuring itself out vs. a Red Wolves team that knows exactly what it wants to do and is feeling pretty good about how it does it after a major upset and thorough stomping of an overmatched opponent. Add to that the fact that ASU (formerly “Indian”) Stadium is an unfamiliar environment for Southern Miss—the Eagles haven’t been to Jonesboro in the current crop of players’ lifetimes—and quite frankly, this one has me concerned. If things aren’t really clicking for the Golden Eagles on Saturday, they will likely find themselves in trouble.

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(Fedora graphic courtesy southernmiss.com. Stadium photo courtesy eaglefan81.)

Louisiana-Lafayette at Southern Miss

Monday’s line: USM -10.5

First meeting: 1923 in Lafayette

Last meeting: 2003 in Hattiesburg (USM won 48-3)

Southern Miss leads the series 37-11-1

Saturday’s season opener features an opponent long familiar to the Golden Eagles. Even though the match-up has been more sporadic in recent years, USM has played more football games vs. UL-L than any opponent other than Memphis, and until either Ole Miss grows a pair or a long-forgotten opponent like the Gulf Coast Military Academy re-opens and joins Division I (which is about as likely), the Ragin’ Cajuns own the distinction of being the Golden Eagles’ (as well as the Normalites’, Yellow Jackets’, Confederates’, and Southerners’) longest-running active opponent.

A member of the Sun Belt, hard times have fallen on the Ragin’ Cajuns in recent years. From 2000-2004, UL-L managed no more than 4 wins per season. A couple of consecutive 6-win seasons in ’05 and ’06–including an ’05 Sun Belt 3-way-Co-Championship (Arkansas State thwarted ULL’s shot at playing a bowl game at home by claiming the New Orleans Bowl berth vs. Southern Miss via tie-breakers)–brought optimism, but that came crashing down under the weight of inexperience and a 3-9 campaign last year. What appeared to be an encouraging 28-14 loss at South Carolina in the season opener turned out to merely be the start of a 5-game losing streak to begin the season, including a humbling 38-17 loss to FCS neighbor McNeese. The Ragin’ Cajuns did manage 2 wins in their final 3 games (the loss being by a mere 6 points to in-state rival and Tide-roller Louisiana-Monroe), however, and hope to build upon that in 2008.

UL-L will bring one of the highest-ranked running games in college football to The Rock on Saturday. The 2007 Ragin’ Cajuns were 7^th in the nation in total yards on the ground and featured two of the Top 40 rushers nationally, both of whom are back in 2008: senior QB Michael Desormeaux (1,141 yards in ‘07) and senior RB Tyrell Fenroy (1,021 yards in ’07; 3,271 in 3 seasons).

One phase of the game does not a team make, however, and all that running success went largely for naught when paired with a passing game ranked 115^th in total yards and a total defense ranked 104^th. The Ragin’ Cajuns also ranked an unsightly 88^th in turnover margin on the year (more on that later).

On defense, the consensus is that the Ragin’ Cajuns strength is the linebacking corp of senior Antwyne Zanders (93 tackles, 7 for loss, 54 solo), sophomore Grant Fleming (71 tackles, 40 solo), and senior Brent Burkhalter (65 tackles, 42 solo). Things are shaky both in front of and behind that threesome, though, as the Cajun D-line helped allow over 228 yards rushing per game in ’07 (good for 113^th in the nation), and as alluded to above regarding turnover margin, the defense as a whole didn’t even crack double-digits in interceptions (9) in 2007. UL-L’s pass defense gave up a quite respectable average of 218 yards per game (43^rd in the nation), but the failure to stop the run combined with a penchant for giving up big plays negated that.

Looking towards 2008, there’s no reason to think the Ragin’ Cajuns’ running game will miss a beat, as the two main cogs are returning seniors and all but one of their offensive linemen are returning starters. The defense should be improved, as they were young last year and return with a great deal of experience, but considering the starting point, even a huge improvement there will only result in mediocrity.

Obviously, the key to the game for Southern Miss will be to stop Desormeaux and Fenroy on the ground. That may be tough since UL-L’s experienced O-line matches up well with the inexperienced USM D-line (zero returning starters). If the Golden Eagles can pull it off, the game should be a blowout. Even if they can’t, the USM offense with own its arsenal of weapons should be able to more than keep pace. Louisiana-Lafayette has just too many things to improve upon for me to be concerned about this one.

First, let me say that I went back and forth on whether or not to even address this particular topic.

"Should I just ignore him?"

On one hand, what’s done is done, and there’s really not a whole lot of point in harping on it any further, especially in light of all the optimism and excitement that abounds these days. On the other hand, it was/is the biggest athletic story at Southern Miss in nearly 2 decades and as such hard to ignore, especially in the face of the harsh, condescending, and often downright ignorant criticism Golden Eagle fans and shot-callers have endured from the media and others (some of which has already been backtracked upon, by the way). At one point, the Jeff Bower resignation and Larry Fedora hire was even going to be the subject of the first “regular” entry to FTF.

"Blah, blah, blah."

However, throughout all the idea-vetting, drafting, editing, quote-compiling, and analyzing I had sporadically dedicated to this topic in the hopes of creating a satisfying blog entry at some point, I kept gravitating back to a famous and often-paraphrased quote by American writer and craftsman Elbert Hubbard that both summed up the situation better in one sentence than I could in a full page and also offered some great advice:

Never explain–your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

Unfortunately for USM, Hubbard’s literary work came during what is now known as the Arts and Crafts Movement and not the present-day era of finger-wagging sportswriters and pundits, but no matter. As noted above, the ignorant have already begun to become educated. If the past 8 months are any indication, that lesson should only progress over the upcoming season and beyond.

I’ve seen some grumbling in the past few days from people upset about the lack of a major boost in season ticket sales this season. A lot of it, to me anyway, is simply a continuation of the perpetual “blame those who aren’t fans” attitude that has infested the USM-verse for eons. Well, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and ask the question that—obvious as it may be—few want to ask:

Just what has Southern Miss done to expect otherwise?

Have our new, cutting-edge efforts to harvest first-time season-ticket buyers fallen on deaf ears? Oh, wait…there haven’t been any such efforts. Are people in South Mississippi and surrounding areas just not interested in an explosive team with a chip on its shoulder that’ll stand toe-to-toe with the nation’s best? Perhaps we could find out if we actually had a team like that.

While I’m as excited about the Fedora era as the next person, and he seems to be laying a great foundation, the fact of the matter is, he hasn’t coached a game yet. To expect one move (which I feel compelled to explore more in-depth in a future update), the results of which are probably a couple of years from materializing, to immediately increase season ticket commitments by two-fold or more is just unrealistic. “Larry Fedora facts” aside, he’s a football coach, not a miracle worker.

"Onward, To The Top!"

This whole discussion reminds me of a conversation I had with a buddy of mine after the Cal game in 2004. My friend, who lives on the East Coast, mentioned how horrible it was that despite USM hosting the #4 team in the country, attendance was still under 28,000.

I responded by telling him that I quit blaming the customer a long time ago. Earlier that same season, we hosted a game as a Top 25 team. Over 30,000 showed up. That Top 25 team then promptly laid one of the biggest eggs in recent memory in front of those 30,000+, looking completely clueless en route to a 52-24 pasting by a Cincinnati team that had just a couple of weeks earlier provided relief to the longest active losing streak in what was then I-A. By the time that Cal game came around, we’d lost two more conference games to put us out of the championship running, had once again barely sneaked by the powerhouse that is UAB, and pretty much already had the New Orleans Bowl trip booked. Why did people stay away? Because 1) truth be known, Texas had more riding on the game than Southern Miss did, and 2) those people knew that recent history dictated that versus a good team, Southern Miss will either get blown off the field or, at best, keep it close only to painfully lose at the end on something goofy like a blocked PAT returned for a defensive conversion (which, of course, is precisely what happened). What, exactly, does one miss out on by watching such a thing transpire from the comfort of their own living room as opposed to buying a ticket and making the trip to campus? Call me cynical, but I seriously doubt anyone who chose not to attend that night is kicking themselves today for not going.

The cold, hard reality here is that there’s a certain amount of..well, reality that has to be dealt with. Part of that reality is that we haven’t fielded a particularly good or otherwise compelling football team in a while, and you simply can’t erase years of frustration and apathy overnight. Some will say, “Well, golly, are you saying we can’t afford to lose at all?” No, but I am saying that when you’re within an easy day’s drive of three traditional national powers and share a state two other “power conference” also-rans, the bar is set high and there’s just not much of a market for what our program has been turning out lately. When presented with any opportunity–whether it be against a Top 25 team or a Sun Belt nobody–to make a statement about who Southern Miss is and what it’s about, that statement has to be made, and it has to be positive.

Sure, I’d love to see more people fired up about Southern Miss football to the point that they’ll commit to a full season’s worth of tickets sight unseen, but there’s a certain level of acceptance that has to come with where we’re at right now. Consider for a moment that ticket sales are a whisker away from a record as I type this–despite not an additional touchdown being scored, an additional game being won, an additional 3^rd-down stop being made, or any specific effort being made to target fresh buyers. That’s not bad. Now just imagine what might happen once we have something more tangible to sell than hope.

Welcome one and all to Feeding the Fever, the newest blog dedicated to all things Golden Eagle. Special thanks go out to BaldEagle, the keeper of EaglePost for hosting this page and putting in the work to get it set up.

Though this is my first full plunge into the blogosphere, I fully expect this page to fall into a nice little rhythm over the coming weeks and months. I plan on adding a major update every week (preferably on a regularly scheduled day to be decided upon soon) with incidental blurbs posted in between as interesting items present themselves (there’s usually no shortage).

Though I have no specific plans for it, I’m sure some recurring features will also develop as time goes by. Obviously, as per the subtitle, the focus here will be Southern Miss, but I’ll be writing of other things around Conference USA and the more general realm of college sports, too. Don’t be surprised to see some palate-cleansing in the form of unrelated tidbits every now and then, too.

So once again, welcome! Sit back, enjoy the ride, and check back soon as we continue Feeding the Fever.

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